please supply evidence for your contention that "The Soviet Union and France were by far the largest arms suppliers to Saddam both before and during the Iran-Iraq war."
The report gives us a complete overview of these supplies for the first time.
In particular it names the 24 US companies and when and to whom in Iraq the supplies were delivered. And it makes clear how strongly the Reagan and the first Bush administrations supported the arming of Iraq, from 1980 up to the Gulf conflict of 1990/91. Substantial construction units for the Iraqi nuclear weapon and rocket programs were supplied with permission of the government in Washington. The poison Anthrax for the arming of Iraq with biological weapons stemmed from US laboratories. Iraqi military and armament experts were trained in the US and there received know-how having to do with their domestic arms programs.
The full list of arms suppliers to Iraq, as published by the taz on 12/19/02, can be found at
http://www.taz.de/pt/2002/12/19/a0080.nf/textdruck Legend used in this list:
A = nuclear program,
B = bioweapons program,
C = chemical weapons program,
R = rocket program,
K = conventional weapons, military logistics, supplies at the Iraqi Defense Ministry and the building of military plants.
After the list of US firms are these remarks: "In addition to these 24 companies home-based in the USA are 50 subsidiaries of foreign enterprises which conducted their arms business with Iraq from within the US. Also designated as suppliers for Iraq's arms programs (A, B, C & R) are the US Ministries of Defense, Energy, Trade and Agriculture as well as the Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories." (Anu's translation)
US CORPORATIONS
1 Honeywell (R, K)
2 Spectra Physics (K)
3 Semetex (R)
4 TI Coating (A, K)
5 Unisys (A, K)
6 Sperry Corp. (R, K)
7 Tektronix (R, A)
8 Rockwell (K)
9 Leybold Vacuum Systems (A)
10 Finnigan-MAT-US (A)
11 Hewlett-Packard (A, R, K)
12 Dupont (A)
13 Eastman Kodak (R)
14 American Type Culture Collection (B)
15 Alcolac International (C)
16 Consarc (A)
17 Carl Zeiss - U.S (K)
18 Cerberus (LTD) (A)
19 Electronic Associates (R)
20 International Computer Systems (A, R, K)
21 Bechtel (K)
22 EZ Logic Data Systems, Inc. (R)
23 Canberra Industries Inc. (A)
24 Axel Electronics Inc. (A)
http://www.rense.com/general32/suppe.htm